


Homura and the Disappearing Ladder

by TaraSamadhi



Series: Love and Adventure in the Homura-verse [2]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Best Friends, Constructed Reality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Forehead Kisses, Forgiveness, Friends to Lovers, Holding Hands, Homoeroticism, Hope vs. Despair, Hopeful Ending, Internal Conflict, Love Confessions, Magical Girls, Monsters, Naked Cuddling, Post-Betrayal, Seduction, Self-Acceptance, Sexual Tension, Slow Romance, Supernatural Elements, Thought Projection, Touching, True Love, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 20:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19027621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSamadhi/pseuds/TaraSamadhi
Summary: Direct sequel to "Madoka Remembers"Our magical girls are in the first year of high school.Madoka has awakened to the Homura-verse and firmly decided she loves Homura. She is now unstoppable and unshakable.Homura, losing control over the pocket universe she created, is in a state of emotional distress, largely because she is going through cognitive dissonance of a million sorts, most especially the possibility that her dreams regarding Madoka are coming true at the worst of times.Homura is most anxious about an onslaught of eldritch monsters against her universe and the increasingly unstable nature of the "ladder", a transit device between the normal world in which she has put Madoka and the scary demonic world to which she has exiled herself.Love, fear, courage, bravery, friendship, faith, hope, rapidly evolving sexuality and sexual expression, and loving-kindness.(There is an extremely important distinction between ways of saying "I love you" as a heavy thing in this. I do not know Japanese. If someone knows it and I have it wrong, let me know and I'll figure out a way to fix it.)





	Homura and the Disappearing Ladder

Homura stood in the upper floor room where she slept, watching her beloved walk down the street and out of sight.

Panic tore through her.

Was Madoka waking up? Did she know what this world was? Why did she say she was sorry for forgetting her? Forgetting what, how far back could she go to forget? Did that mean she was awake and understood was happening? But if Madoka understood, she would hate her, Homura. If Madoka hated her, Homura thought, she would be dead. Just the existence of Madoka's hate would kill her. But I’m alive, Homura told herself. So Madoka doesn’t know.

Right?

She beat her head with her fists. And what’s worse, how could she ask Madoka those things without making them happen?

And what’s more, what’s…

Twice, Madoka had said it. Not “daisuki”, but “aishite imasu”. Twice, she said she loved Homura, loved her soul to soul. What could it mean? It was too much.

Homura was beginning to doubt whether she should have put herself in this world. Maybe it was too much of an indulgence, to act human and be with Madoka. And she must not have heard Madoka right, Madoka would not have made fun of her that way, to say that, that she loved her, she couldn’t say that, she hadn’t said that, how would it be possible to live if she said that.

*

Then, there was the ladder.

Homura did not know what else to call it. It was a passage through the membrane separating this world where she had Madoka, and Madoka’s friends like the infinitely annoying Sayaka, live very safely. It was like climbing up and down, going through that membrane, on a barely visualizable ladder from the materialization of the mundane world to the ambiguities of the world where she, in demonic form, dealt with other demonic forms that encroached on the people she was constantly trying to protect.

Homura knew that things had not gone the way she planned, when she created a pocket universe out of whole cloth. She had planned on making that scheme the center of the universe, had planned and worked on it since, escaping her witch form in the labyrinth, she had become a demon in an extended labyrinth that she used as a transform space. But the wraiths came unannounced and of course unwanted with the new world, and outside the membrane, malign life forms including allies of the wraiths were constantly knocking on the door or trying to knock it down.

Immediately upon climbing through the membrane and preparing to deal with encroaching life forms, Homura’s erotic black demonic outfit, which she now called the “goth napkin”, and the black wings that erupted from between her shoulder wings made their appearance. Sometimes, she was amused at this transformation guided in its origin by her previous transformation that led to accidentally killing the earthbound Kyubeys. Sometimes, she didn’t think it was funny at all, especially when she was sick with anxiety that the whole thing would materialize in the normal world where she lived with Madoka, leading her to be exposed as alien, nonhuman, and forever unfit to love her beloved.

Climbing the ladder was a thing of fear and sorrow, fear because she had miscalculated in her creation and sorrow because she never knew, if the ladder vanished, which side of the membrane she would be on and what the price for the consequence would be.

Her house was half real and half not. Any part of the house where Madoka might go looked normal, although it wasn’t furnished very carefully and Homura’s parents were permanently somewhere else. Literally in the center, sealed by over a hundred ward spells, was the ladder. It was basically a cylindrical void through which no light passed. But when she entered it from the bottom, she ascended to the field of encounter, and when she entered it from the top, she descended to the normal world where Madoka was.

Homura turned from the window, whispering a goodbye to Madoka in case she never returned from beyond the membrane, and walked to the ladder. It was time to do this for the day. She stepped into the cylindrical void. Hallucinations of departing reality flashed through her eyes and the dim orange light of the portal beyond the membrane filled them until she had to blink. Now in full demon regalia, she stepped out of the ladder and into the open space where the various enemies emerged.

The wraiths were no longer that much of a problem. She had them in a kind of concentration enclosure in the normal world, unable to kill them as they rematerialized after destruction, a ring composed of what she could make of the matter opposed to what they displayed of matter. One way or another, they never appeared here.

But other things showed up there. Lovecraftian squid abominations with thousands of tentacles covered with sharp-fanged mouths. Amorphous blobs like jellyfish, shimmeringly beautiful but ready to sting and shock at any time. Hallucinations that looked like sweet children but vomited blood and grinned with teeth covered with eyes. Kyubey-like life forms explaining to her why she should let them in and kill everyone. That was a few of them. Homura could always defeat them by calculating their nature and using her power to dismantle them at the quantum level, metaphorically speaking.

The problem was, they kept coming. She never knew, if she descended the ladder, whether during a state of happiness as a high school girl with her beloved Madoka, they came crashing down after her and attacked the world she had built to protect her.

Why and how had she screwed up to let all these monsters exist? She didn’t know. But it was reality.

Fortunately, that night, there was nothing coming or arrived to worry about. The pulsing, sickly orange light of the emergence void shadowed or revealed nothing. Homura put up fifty or so more ward spells and went back down the ladder. Maybe she could sleep tonight.

She showered, put on a thin slip, and curled up in a ball under the bed covers. No wings, no goth napkin. Only a girl, frightened and facing the world with as much courage as she could summon. Longing in agony for another girl who had, hours ago, told her she loved her with all her heart.

Loneliness had breached and annihilated the membrane separating her from horror, long ago, and its teeth and claws were reserved only for her. Every hour of every day and night, she fought and fled from it, but it was in her, consuming her for the eternal home stretch.

Madoka, she thought, why did you say you love me. I was okay until you said that you love me.

*

Homura walked to school, musing on the weather. Just for fun, when she created this place, she had set the weather so it could evolve naturally, except for really catastrophic events that would hurt the people she was protecting. Today was overcast and the air smelled like trees, as wind blew in the advance edge of an oncoming storm. Late cherry petals thinly surged and scattered. Nice, Homura thought. I did a good job on the weather.

Of course, Madoka would be coming along about then, and there she came, her beloved pink friend, waving happily at her and calling out “Homura-chan! Homura-chan!”

Homura stopped, a little disoriented. The only person she ever wanted to see was, at the moment, the one person she did not want to see. She would rather have seen Sayaka and listened to her wisecracks than see Madoka. But no, she should be grateful, grateful for her beloved. That is all that mattered in the end.

Madoka ran up and caught Homura up in her arms, putting their cheeks together. “I’m so glad I met Homura-chan first!”

“Oh Madoka,” Homura said, “why do you say these silly things to me?”

Madoka suddenly became serious. “What silly things, Homura-chan?”

Homura closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see Madoka’s reaction. “Like yesterday, I heard you say you loved me rather than liked me. I mean, it’s a good thing to hear, but it makes me feel more than I probably should, like we’re the friends I want us to be but aren’t yet.”

“Do you think I’m lying, Homura-chan?” Madoka said severely, and she was not joking. Homura looked at her, feeling oddly like she was looking at two photographs of the same thing taken minutes apart. “Why do you think I’m a liar?”

“Madoka, come on, I…” Homura stopped, summoned her courage, and went on. “I just don’t need to hear things that aren’t true.”

Madoka crossed over to her rapidly, threw her arms around her, and snapped her into a lock embrace. Homura literally could not move. This was pleasant for a minute or so, but after that she began to feel contained and alarmed.

“Madoka…”

“I love you, Homura-chan,” Madoka said, tightening her grip further. When did she get so strong? Homura wondered. “I love you and I am not letting go until you believe me.”

“Madoka, school…”

“I don’t care about school if you don’t believe I love you, Homura-chan.”

Startled, Homura realized that tears were coming from Madoka’s face, buried in her shoulder, and gathering on her skin.

“How could you love me like that?” Homura asked. ‘You love me’ (Aishite imase)… No one has ever said that to me. I’ve never heard anyone say that to anyone. You haven’t known me for that long.”

“I had to make sure you understood what I meant. And I’ve known you long enough to mean that,” Madoka said. “Let’s go to school.” She took Homura’s hand and they began walking. She had not bothered to wipe the tears from her face.

I have the internal strength of a marshmallow, Homura thought. She can make me do anything. I’d dress up like a clown and balance a ball on my head in front of the whole school, if she told me to. Was it always this way?

She thought about it for a while. No, it hasn’t always been this way. Because I haven’t been able to be with her much since we first met. Now is the first time I’ve really known her. She’s such a beautiful thing. And she says she loves me.

Why does she say that? Homura asked herself. It can’t be true. She hasn’t known me that long. And she doesn’t hate me. She would have to know me to love me, and if she remembered enough to know me, she would have to hate me. So she can’t love me unless she hates me. That…doesn’t make sense.

Is this a good thing, being with Madoka? It’s worse than it was before. I’m loving her more and more to where I won’t have anywhere to go. This is going to destroy everything I’ve managed to be. I’m going to disappear. Someday when I go up the ladder, I won’t be able to go back, because I’ll be dead. There will be no way to go back down. This love, it’s always hurt, but now it’s eating me.

Because what she told me… It’s what I’ve dreamed. If I wake up and she never said it or hates me, thinking she said it would be worse than anything.

I want her.

*

Homura said goodbye to Madoka and they went to their different homerooms. She went to her desk by the window, barely going through the motions of following the class routine for twenty minutes or so.

Then she saw something completely outrageous and impossible, so much so that she couldn’t even get angry.

Out in the space between the gym and the tennis courts, through a screen of trees Homura scanned from above, were a head of blue hair and a head of red hair stuck together as though someone had smashed them into place with permanent glue.

“No,” she thought. But when she summoned up some power and stared really hard, there was no denying it. Sayaka and Kyouko were skipping class and, almost in view of the whole school, kissing as though their lives depended on it.

Homura took a couple of minutes to process this, even after Madoka’s friends broke their lip lock and moved on away from the school, and realized she was having trouble breathing. What the actual hell? Why did they get to…

Why did they get to what?

Homura buried her face in her hands.

Sensei was going on and on about exponents and factors and other stuff, and Homura was going around and around in her own brain like a hamster on a wheel. Since when… Well, since forever. Ever since that one lifetime when Kyouko gave herself up to death for that blue-haired idiot Sayaka, whenever Homura saw them together, they were visibly growing closer and closer. It’s unnatural.

I want her.

*

Madoka brazenly lied to her parents about why she was going where she was going, and set out walking. Her entire body trembled, and her eyes could barely focus. This, she thought, may be the dumbest thing you have done in a lifetime of dumb things. But Homura-chan, I love Homura-chan. That is how it is. And she must know it, because she has loved me for so long and I have been so terrible to her. So I have to do this.

The long thunderstorm earlier had long passed and late evening light made beautiful flaming jewels in little ponds and the beads of water on trees. She did such a good job, Madoka thought. She could have been an artist. A beautiful artist, the kind you look at at a gallery and don’t notice the pictures. She is very beautiful, Homura-chan. Her eyes are so dark and tender. I like to look at them all the time.

What did I just feel?

*

As soon as Homura got home, the ladder began making strange noises, as though it had been waiting.

Moaning, and grating scratching sounds like talons on wood. Shrieks of almost-human voices.

Oh my God, Homura thought. They’ve broken in. No. She ran to the ladder and jumped in. She climbed it, listening to the noises, heart pounding. What’s here? What’s in there? She desperately struggled to be cool. Get ready as soon as you step out of the portal, she said. You can do it. You can destroy anything.

Her eyes registered nothing when she climbed out of the ladder, but the goth napkin was on and her black wings swung out from between her shoulder blades. Her demon eyes split into as many facets as she needed to see all around, and she went into battle posture.

There was nothing there. Nothing. The sounds were gone, the deflection shield she had put up was intact. Everything was okay.

Except, she found as she turned to leave, the ladder was gone. She was here and couldn’t get back. She had built one ladder but had not known how to build another.

*

Madoka walked up to Homura’s door, overnight bag swung over her shoulder. She breathed deeply and rang the bell.

No answer. Maybe Homura-chan was gone and these plans wouldn’t work. Madoka felt nauseous with disappointment over that possibility, but something told her it wasn’t true. Homura-chan wouldn’t open the door.

Homura-chan couldn’t open the door.

That last thought it her between the eyes like a hammer. Her heart began to beat fast. Something was wrong with Homura-chan. Madoka tried the knob, but the door was locked. Let’s see what I have, she thought. She placed a hand on the knob, stared at it, and blinked her eyes. Force ran down from the bottom of her skull, along the shoulder, down the arm, into the hand, down the fingers, into the knob. The lock disengaged and the door swung open.

Madoka walked quickly into the house. Oh Homura-chan, she thought sadly. This doesn’t look like a house. It doesn’t look like one at all. Do you even live here?

The rooms were all putty gray and undecorated. Furniture was sparse to the point of being token ornament. Madoka wandered through the rooms, musing. I’m not surprised, she thought. How much have you ignored Homura-chan’s sadness that you are not surprised? Methodically, inevitably, Madoka wound her way through the rooms toward the center she knew was there. It filled her with fear that made it hard to walk, but that was how she needed to go.

Finally, she opened a door to a tiny room in the middle of the house. She stopped in her tracks and stared at the floor before tears began spilling down her face, curtains of them, blinding her before they fell.

“Oh Homura-chan,” she thought. “I love you so.”

Homura’s body lay tangled on the floor in a cylindrical shadow that swirled within, like smoke, her cloud of straight black hair reaching across the floor as though seeking help, way too late.

*

Homura moaned and screamed as she clawed at the space where the ladder had been. No, she thought. No. A false alarm. I want Madoka. I want her. Where is this ladder, for the love of God?

She knelt and wept, her wings drooping and draping the floor of the portal where the ladder was supposed to be.

Then, the horror.

Beings of some sort, beings of shivering light from an alien spectrum, were coming toward the membrane, thousands of them, opaque surfaces reflecting images of all of her fears. Their malevolence was clearer than it would have been if they looked evil. They were coming to destroy the membrane and enter and destroy the world, and pop like soap bubbles once they did so. These were the worst, far and away the worst. Their entire being, entire life was dedicated to destroying everything she loved, and once they did that, it was over. They were the pure form of the world as it hurt her, as she hurt the world.

Despair swept over and through her. This was it, here she was, there they were, there was nothing left.

Madoka, I love you, help me! She screamed it within. Help me, my love, I love you, I accept your love, I adore you, please help me!  
The light changed, from the sickly orange of the emergence field beyond the shattered deflection shield, visible through the approaching enemy. It became outrageously bright. Her eyes went dark and she closed them. What? When she opened them again the light had calmed again, but it was no longer orange. It was white, and bands of hue from the familiar spectrum pulsed in circles around the sky. The bands of color faded into fine differentiations of red and white, danced into and away from each other, and left afterimages that were all that was left after the bands disappeared.

The afterimages were pink. Bright, flamingo pink. They expanded and converged, filling the sky. The enemy blobs were now visible as outlines, as though drawn by a pencil, against the pink. Far away was a portal, which Homura had not seen before, open and releasing the enemy.  
Suddenly, the pink turned blood red. The whole field blazed with an electrifying shade of red that stopped Homura’s heart. The color was like an object, trembing and shuddering. The enemy’s penciled outlines grew more and more vivid against the red. Then…

An absolutely terrifying strobe flash of red swept through the emergence field, obliterating the enemy, every shred of it. It took a fraction of a second. No traces, fragments, dust remained. The enemy had been slapped out of existence, as though someone had swept it away from pure contempt and simple disgust at its presence.

Homura saw a change far away, in the red. She harrowed her eyes. It was the enemy portal, now isolated, and she saw it sealing, defending itself by withdrawing into a shell in another world.

An explosion of impossibly bright pink light slammed through and behind the portal. Nothing could possibly survive that, and nothing did.  
She couldn’t either, it was impossible. Because the brilliant light reversed out, imploded around her, and slammed through her heart.  
Homura pitched forward on her face and disappeared into the void.

*

Homura awoke pressed against something soft. 

She opened her eyes to something so beautiful that she had no response.

Homura lay naked, on her side in her bed, in the dark. Pressed against her, lips against her forehead, her breasts compressed against hers, was a naked Madoka. Madoka breathed sweetly and deeply. Her hair was tangled and the deepening outlines of her maturing face were so exquisite that Homura could not bear to look.

I’m dreaming, definitely, Homura thought as she sat up and grabbed a nightgown she always kept on the floor by the bed. I never feel in my dreams, though. She’s so soft and smooth and warm. I feel like I just had heaven for dinner. But it’s definitely a dream.

The ladder. Something had happened with the ladder. 

Homura looked back at Madoka’s sleeping naked body and felt a shock run from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. I can keep dreaming, it looks like, she thought. I don’t have to get out of bed. I can lie with her again, one with that beautiful breathing flesh of my beloved.

But she had to check the ladder.

The ladder was gone. She knew that before turning on the light. Not a trace of it remained, the cylinder that had been there for so long. And its presence, its resonance had vanished as well. She would have to make something else.

How had it happened? She remembered terror, concentric circles of pure annihilating horror, gigantic changes of color and light, peace again, the ladder vanished. But it had vanished on the other side. And Madoka…

Homura went back to the bedroom. Madoka, or the dream of her, was gone. No, Homura thought, no. I want her. How could I leave her when I had her? But it’s impossible that she had been here in the first place. 

The ladder is gone, but so is my only love, the name of my heart. My love, where are you. I need you. I’m stranded at this end of the ladder, so tired, can’t look at these things anymore. Even you, really, my love, maybe it’s best I can’t see you. There’s not much left. It’s best I see you when I have something to give you, right in my hands before you.

Homura lay down and slept for fifteen hours.

*

Madoka briskly walked home in the predawn light, back to her house to get ready for breakfast and leave for school. She was happier than she had ever been, clearer in thought, stronger in purpose.

Well Homura-chan, she thought, I’m glad I came over. And you didn’t even invite me. You must have been surprised and thought you were dreaming when you woke up pressed against me. I felt like I was on fire pressed up against you, happy fire. All night I was so happy. Thank you, even though you did not know.

I’ll see you in school. We’re lovers now. But you won’t know. We’ll take it step by step, as long as we need. But I had to give you one thing after what I managed to do on the other end of the ladder, something you’ve never had, my only beloved one.

I’ve given you the first chance you’ve ever had not to remember.


End file.
